Shadowgrounds has been created with advanced professional tools. Frozenbyte decided very early in the development process that an in-house Level Editor should be created for the game. It was never meant for public release, but due to the strong feedback we have decided to make it available to fans of Shadowgrounds. Getting started with the Level Editor is fairly easy, and if you follow the sections on this page, you will have your mod up and running quickly.

Last updates:

29 June 2006
* First release of the Level Editor and all the accompanying pages (please be patient as we polish everything)

General Notes

Please note that the Shadowgrounds Level Editor and its tools are provided "as-is". By using the Level Editor you agree to the license defined in EDITOR_LICENSE.txt.

The Level Editor works best with resolutions of 1280x960 and up. 1024x768 works ok as well, but it gives you a limited view of some settings, most importantly the lightmap calculations and Units/Scripts. It is recommended you change the resolution when you want to use those options.

Note for Steam users

The Level Editor and the tools work fine with the Steam version of Shadowgrounds. The Steam version can also play mods just like a retail version of Shadowgrounds. The only major difference is that the main directory structure (i.e. the Steam version of Shadowgrounds is usually located in Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youraccount\shadowgrounds\ ).

Navigating the pages

If you simply want to play mods and new missions, please go to the New Missions & Mods, which has information on how to install and launch mods.

Shadowgrounds has a scripting language that allows you to create all kinds of cool ingame events. Read more about loading screens, dialogue scripting and others on the page Mission Scripting. It is very important to start with the basics, so read Getting Started. The Tutorials section is also very useful and has instructions on how to create PDAs, for example.

If you are having problems with the Level Editor and other mod stuff, check out the Troubleshooting section. When you have created your mod and want to distribute it, please read the Distributing Mods page.